Today, Cameka ‘Ruth’ Taylor is one confident woman, basking in the joy that she is an overcomer and living her best life.
It has not always been so. About 10 years ago she was dealt a crushing blow as the wedding with the man of her dreams never materialised—this after sharing her plans on social media and inviting about 300 guests to the wedding.
Opening up about her experience on Season 1, Episode 2 of WomenUP, Ruth went in-depth on how she navigated her way from heartbreak to wholesomeness.
Engaged to be married for the second time around, she got an email from her fiancé in December that made her realise she was now treading a rocky path and it might not work out.
She shared that she recognised that it wasn’t going to work, but they still decided to try and see if the relationship could be salvaged.
Shortly thereafter, her partner delivered the crushing blow that he would not be returning to the island and that the relationship was over.
“It really left me devastated because I had gone public with this relationship. So my Facebook was painted red, and when I’m in love, I write poems and all kinds of things. And then I had gone on a mission trip to Namibia and Zambia, and on my way back, I had reconciled with my dad just about the year before, and I invited my dad to the wedding,” she informed.
With plans for a big wedding, dresses bought, hotels booked, and everything else in place, Ruth had to deal with the embarrassment of cancellation and everyone knowing. She felt crushed.
Recalling her emotions at the time, she said she was talking to her best friend and venting about being a Christian and going through that. She also expressed her disappointment in God, and had the desire to go to bed and never wake up.
“So in the morning, when I woke up, I was like, Why am I still here? And you know, it was in that season that God revealed to me that he is giving me more time,” she related. He added that the time would ensure she went the extra mile and began the healing process.
Through her pain, the Lord sent support in the form of her friends, who invited her to Portland for Christmas to just cool out for a couple of days and think it through.
She confessed that until the email, she didn’t know that things were going wrong as she thought everything was okay. Prior to the main wedding, she said they had done “a little Jewish bethrowal,” as in Jewish culture, you actually have a two-part wedding.
“We’re not Jews, but we wanted something to symbolise how serious this was. All that was left was for him to come back, and we had the ceremony, and so this was kind of like ‘sign, seal and done,’ so I did not expect that. But maybe because it’s a long-distance relationship, sometimes stuff happens and you see people and you experience things,” she deduced.
Ten years later, after that experience, Ruth said she no longer feels that anger, but she remembers the time she spoke with her best friend, exclaiming her disbelief and anger, and that her self-esteem took a big blow.
It didn’t help that she had a prior engagement that was broken off, and her then fiancé got married to a ‘light skin girl,’ a Mexican. This incident brought her back into that dark space where she felt she was not good enough.
“You know it brought back stuff because you grew up thinking that because you’re dark skin, you’re not good enough, and here again, you know another incident of somebody that I fall in love with, with leaving me for somebody of a lighter complexion, that kind of thing [and] long hair, and so you kind of feel like you’re not enough. You know that kind of thing, so there was all of that—the embarrassment, the anger. How could you do this to me, God?” she related.
Moving from a state of brokenness to triumph, Ruth said it was not a single thing but rather having a strong family foundation, friends, and pastors who helped her along the way.
She learned to find meaning in the situation and didn’t allow herself to suffer in silence. According to Taylor, as soon as she got the email, she reached out to her best friend, who was with her at the time, and then to others who took her under their wing.
“Coming back from Namibia, I set up what I call my social support system, and so I had in it counsellors, Reverend Carla Dunbar and Reverend Courtney Richards—he’s a psychologist, so I have a tight network, and so that really aided in my healing,” she highlighted.
Rev. Richards rebuilt her self-esteem by reminding her she was a “loved prize and valued.” Those words sustained her and eventually became the theme of her book, “Unshackled Queen: From Heartbreak to Wholeness,” which she penned and published to capture her journey.